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Lectures and Other Geological EventsLondon Branch organizes a series of lectures on a variety of geological themes. The guest lecturers are drawn from the ranks of professional and serious lay geologists. LECTURE VENUE AT THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMOur meetings are held in the Courtyard Rooms in the basement. We have to provide a list of names for the security points and will be required to show membership cards. IT IS ESSENTIAL that you make contact and register if you are at all interested in attending and to get confirmation of arrangements – you can always cancel. Note that the start time for talks is 7.00 pm. You cannot enter before 6.30pm and you will not be able to enter after 7.00pm. Stop PressChange of access arrangements to the Natural History Museum from 17th SeptemberThe staff entrance now closes at 5.50 and so access to the Courtyard Room will be via Museum Lane just beyond the entrance to the Earth Galleries. Walk through the arch to have your name ticked off at the security point. As before access is only possible between 6.30 and 7.0 pm when we will have staff members posted at the two security points to let you through. Courtyard Rooms is marked 'Waterhouse Building East' on the map. We will all try and leave together via the back car park. The nearest tube station is South Kensington. Contact Di Clements Registering Your Interest In An EventNow there is a new and convenient way of registering for or asking questions about any or all of our events online, using the Registration Form. Simply select the events you are interested in, enter your contact details and press the button. The organisers of the events you have selected will contact you and confirm your registration. You can use the form as many time as you like and you are not committed to anything by registering an interest - you are saving the LOUGS money and the organisers' time by registering in this way. Go on, give it a go. If you have any problems or questions, please contact me at paul@lougs.org.uk.
As well as lectures, London Branch also organizes other geological events during the afternoons or evenings. ANNUAL GENERAL MEETINGSATURDAY 6TH FEBRUARY 2010The AGM will be held on Saturday afternoon of the 6th February 2010 at the Natural History Museum in the Dorothea Bate Room in the Palaeontology Department. Access is via the main entrances to the museum either in Cromwell Road or Exhibition Road (not the Museum Lane entrance we usually use) and is a door at the end of the Fossil Marine Reptiles gallery in ‘Waterhouse Way’. It is beside the giant sloth, near the door through to the Bird Gallery. There will be someone on the door with a swipe card from 2.30. Please make sure you register in advance by sending the form on page 13 to Laurie Baker. The AGM will start at 15:00 and will be followed by a guest lecture, this year given by Steph Flude of the OU on “Icelandic volcanism: what's the deal with the rhyolite?” After the talk, there will be the annual London Branch Dinner. This will be at Sole Luna Italian restaurant (same place as last year). The cost will be £8 per head, payable in advance, and has been subsidised again this year with great thanks to the John Daniels Fund. The cost includes a glass of wine or soft drink as well as a choice of main course, ice-cream and coffee. The full dinner menu can be found below. Please fill in the form on page 13 of the London Platform and send it to Laurie Baker as soon as possible, and by Saturday 23rd January at latest. All committee members are willing to continue to serve. In this issue of London Platform we have included a nomination form. If you are interested in helping on the committee, or know of anyone you want to nominate, please get their permission, find a seconder and send the form to the Branch Secretary, Laurie Baker, to reach him by Saturday 23rd January. Alternatively, if you would rather not take up a position on the committee but are willing to be co-opted for organising the occasional event when required please indicate this on the nomination form, all help will be gratefully appreciated. Many hands make light work! If you need another copy of the nomination form, please contact Laurie Baker (preferably by email – laurie@lougs.org.uk). If you have any motions you want to put to the membership at the AGM, please find a seconder for them and send the motion and the names of the proposer and seconder to Laurie Baker by the same date. It would be helpful if you could give the background to your motion if it is not self explanatory. Please do come to the AGM, you will be made very welcome. The meeting is not just about doing the routine, yet important, business of the branch, but is an opportunity to meet old friends, make new ones and to hear about the trips and lectures planned for 2010. We would especially like to meet new branch members, and those of you who haven’t been able to attend any events this year. Do bring along your field trip photographs as well. We wish you a Happy Christmas and a Peaceful New Year and we all look forward to seeing you on the 6th February. The 2009 Committee TALK “Icelandic volcanism: what's the deal with the rhyolite?” by Steph Flude of the OU Iceland is the result of the interaction between the Mid Atlantic Ridge and the Iceland hotspot. While it is predominantly formed from basaltic material, a significant amount of silicic (>65% SiO2) lava has been erupted. The origin of silicic volcanism in Iceland is under debate; do silicic magmas form by fractional crystallisation of basaltic magma? Or by remelting of older volcanic or igneous material? How are these processes affected by glacial loading? And what can they tell us about volcanic evolution?" Laurie Baker (register using the form in the London Platform) February Thursday 18HALF-TERM EVENT – Northmoor Hill RIGS with Jill Eyers Jill has included Northmoor Hill in her Rocks Afoot series of geological walks and has been instrumental in making this one of our 'local' RIGS sites. For some years it has been overgrown but now a concerted effort has been made to conserve the site. Jill has had a volunteer team out there and now she has money to finish the job professionally. It seemed to us a good idea to get out there with Jill to look at it before the summer vegetation re-established itself and so rather than our usual inner London building stone walk we decided to visit this site. The Nature Reserve has maintained walkways and steps, and interpretative boards at the points of interest so it will be possible to do the walk without the full regalia of boots and hard hats. Jill has provided a good description of the route in her book with clues to the underlying rock types in the vegetation and comparison of a modern and fossil ‘swallow hole’ and she will be able to show us these. We have decided to make it a morning trip, followed by lunch in a suitable pub for those that want it leaving plenty of time to get back to London for the evening talk. Meet: 11.00 am Northmoor Hill Nature Reserve: Tilehurst Lane, opposite Denham aerodrome [TQ 034 891]. There is ample car-parking but no toilet facilities. Alternatively there will be a pick-up from the following stations at 10.30: Hillingdon Underground Metropolitan Line and Denham Mainline Bring: Suitable warm/wet clothing but if coming by train, stout shoes rather than boots will be sufficient. Cost: Our usual field-trip charge of £2.50 will cover both the trip and evening talk. Please indicate if you will require a lift and your preferred station (Eyers, J. 1998 Rocks afoot: Geological walks in south Buckinghamshire. Published by J. Eyers, 48 pp. Information can also beviewed at: http://www.bucksgeology.org.uk/northmoor_hill.html) Please register for the day and evening events separately. Laurie Baker February Thursday 18TALK: ‘Thames Tideway’ by Jackie Skipper The Thames Tideway Project – or, a brief history of trying to keep the Thames clean
March Thursday 18TALK: ‘ 'Tectonic evolution of the Zagros’ by John Cosgrove The Zagros mountain belt is a young, active orogenic belt forming at the junction of the Arabian and Iranian plates. Deformation is propagating towards the southwest into the Arabian plate by a combination of brittle and ductile deformation. The resulting fold-thrust belt and associated foreland basin, partially sub-areal (the Mesopotamian valley) and partially sub-marine (the Persian Gulf) provide a unique opportunity to study the evolution of foreland deformation which is the result of the interplay between fluid pressure, brittle and ductile deformation and the formation of salt diapirs. Di Clements April Thursday 15TALK: ‘Impact cratering and ejecta deposits: Investigations in the Australasian tektite strewn field and new insights from Darwin Crater’ by Kieran Torrens Howard Hypervelocity meteorite impacts result in the formation of impact craters and are now recognized as important agents of geologic change that have shaped the surface of Earth and lives of it inhabitants since the beginning of time. On Earth impact craters fall into two main morphological types - simple and complex. Simple craters are of the classical bowl shape. As impact energy (controlled by size of impactor) increases, the diameter of the resulting crater increases and the crater morphology changes. With increasing diameter, steepening of the inner walls leads to slumping and in response to the compressive impact pressures the crater floor rebounds producing terracing of the crater rims and raised central peaks (For an excellent review see French 2004; Traces of Catastrophe http://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications). During the excavation of impact craters rocks may be brecciated, shocked, molten and completely vaporized (along with the meteorite) by pressures that may exceed 50GPa and temperatures >2000 °c. This produces a range of crater-fill lithologies including lithic and melt bearing (suevite) breccias and impact melt rocks that are described with examples from the 230m Darwin Crater drill core (Howard & Haines 2007; EPSL 260) and elsewhere. Darwin Crater is a buried simple crater located in a dense rain forested valley in western Tasmania and is the source of Darwin glass (Howard 2008; Meteorit. & Planet. Sci 43). In some impacts melt ejection appears to be extremely efficient resulting in production of widely dispersed impact melt. Tektites are the best example of such melt and exist in 4 or 5 strewn fields that may extend many thousands of kilometers. The origin of tektites – that Henry Faul famously remarked are “probably the most frustrating stones ever found on earth“ (Faul 1966; Science 152) - remains poorly constrained. The most studied tektite field is the Australasian strewn field that stretches from on-land in south china to the Antarctic highlands. Despite being the youngest strewn field (ca. 800ka), no source crater has been identified in what is a significant mystery to science. In a series of field seasons in NE Thailand we explored the distribution of tektites and placed constraints on the impact location by documentation and paleo-magnetic dating of flood deposits contemporaneous to the time of impact (Haines et al. 2004; EPSL 225). Containing a mixture of scorched and variably burnt fossil trees along with pristine tektites, these flood deposits may be a rare insight into the dynamic range of impact induced environmental effects. At Darwin Crater, studies of the glass distribution reveal processes involved in impact glass and tektite formation (Howard 2009; Meteorit. & Planet. Sci. 44). Work at this crater also provides new insights into the role of volatiles in impact process. We demonstrate that the presence of a surface swamp at the time of impact produced a volatile charged target stratigraphy and increased magnitude explosion resulting in wide dispersion of melt and this may have implications for tektite origins Di Clements May Thursday 20TALK: ‘Predicting Earthquakes’ by Peter Sammonds Di Clements June Thursday 17TALK: ‘The story of Messel fossil pit: how Ida and company became unearthed’ by Susanne Feist-Burkhardt Di Clements July Sunday 4S276 Revision DayRun by LOUGS at Royal Holloway College in Egham. The provisional outline below is based on the previous S260 course, any changes are likely to be minor. The revision day addresses the 'practical' aspect of the exam which is worth 50% of the marks. Hence you can pass by working hard at Egham, without worrying about the rest! The day is divided into three sessions and a lunch break. It has been running for over twenty years and is led by experienced tutors. The problem map in part II of the exam requires a knowledge of geological maps and field relations. In this session you will work through a number of examples using models and a well tried procedure which has been found to be a great help to those having difficulty with this aspect of the course. The rocks session revises the classification of rocks and provides rock samples for identification. Hands on experience of identifying rocks is the best way of gaining the experience to do well in the exam. The best geologists are those who have handled the most rocks. The fossil session gives students an opportunity to examine a variety of 'real' fossils which complement those in the Home Experiment Kit. The session concentrates on the compulsory part of the paper where students are asked to draw and label a given specimen and make deductions about its mode of living and fossilisation potential. The session will finish with a short tutorial on the graphic log element of the course. All this is provided for £5 - which includes free tea/ coffee/ soft drinks. You can also take the opportunity to talk to tutors and graduates regarding future course choices. A fun and worthwhile day in the company of other students and tutors. Register book a place and to receive full details including how to pay. Geoff Barton July Thursday 15Evening walk “Looking for the lost River Tyburn”. Di Clements September Thursday 16TALK: ‘Ten things you did not know about the geological evolution of the Thames’ by Andrew Newell Di Clements October Thursday 21TALK: OU Phd Student tbc Di Clements November Thursday 18Members’ Evening - Jenny Parry Di Clements December Thursday 9TALK: ‘The role of a mantle plume in the formation of the Siberian Traps’ by Andy Saunders Di Clements
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